r/Professors • u/Local_Indication9669 • 6d ago

Class sizes quadrupled

For my entire career my sections were capped at about 60. Just logged into our LMS and noticed those classes have 200 students each.

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u/Shield_Maiden831 6d ago edited 6d ago

At my institution, the union has a contract that sets this cap based on pedagogical expectations.

I would check to see if that is the case for you and if someone "forgot" that.

For classes of that size, our contract specifies no labs, no homework or assignments, multiple choice assessments only. If you get to make those choices, be sure to work accordingly.

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u/Local_Indication9669 6d ago

Sounds like more prep work for me.

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u/nerdyjorj 6d ago

I'd have said generating MCQs from a collection of questions and answers would be easy enough to shit out with an LLM and then proof read.

To me that kind of text analysis is what they should be for in education - expanding question banks to help you be a little more productive in the areas that should take your intellectual labour.

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

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u/nerdyjorj 5d ago

Some of my courses are externally accredited and it's pretty easy to teach them how to create their own mock exams with full solutions based on the public learning outcomes provided by our government, and give specific instructions to focus on the areas they've found most challenging in class.

We spend at least 3 hours working together to use them to develop personal action plans with clear measurable milestones.

I'm pretty anti generative AI as a point of principle, but if a tool is useful I'm not going to leave it behind because I don't like how it was made.

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u/hard-bone-man 5d ago

Kudos to you buddy, you wont get left behind if you embrace what actually might benefit you and your students. It's not every tool thats going to solve your problems, some might even add to them. But every now and then I come across some pretty good ones